22-year-old San Francisco student Luca Iaconi-Stewart has taken the hobby of papercraft to astounding new levels of complexity.

After being inspired in an architecture class in 2008, Iaconi-Stewart began the painstaking work of crafting an entire Boeing 777 out of manila folders. Not content to just create a shell of the plane, Iaconi-Stewart filled the 1:60 scale model with an intricate level of detailing, including individual seats, overhead compartments, and functioning cargo doors. Again, entirely out of Manila folders.

You can see videos of a time-lapse paint job and the cargo doors in action AFTER THE JUMP...

Comments

So many people say "oh, that is awesome" and
really don't have a clue what the word "awesome" is supposed to connote.

This endeavor by this person is indeed:

awesome.

I'm sending this link to Boeing.

Posted by: BrokebackBob | Jan 28, 2014 12:22:00 PM

It probably has the same legroom that a real Boeing 707 did in 1957.

Posted by: Juan Trippe | Jan 28, 2014 12:24:41 PM

AWESOME! (I Know the meaning. Most do.)

Posted by: Mitch | Jan 28, 2014 12:39:10 PM

This is technically incredibly impressive...but it's model-building. Even with the tricky medium, it's not "art." It's entirely his prerogative to make, but as an art STUDENT, he should be spending his time learning and creating, not replicating.

Posted by: Robert | Jan 28, 2014 1:19:09 PM

It's the gayest thing I've ever seen. The first Boying 769.

Posted by: UFFDA | Jan 28, 2014 2:03:57 PM

@Robert, a huge part of art school is learning how to work with materials and tools to understand their capabilities and limitations and how to manipulate them. This project is about pushing the materials, the tools, and the artist to their limits, and engaging in the intensive repetition the shear number of details demands. This is how a student of art internalizes the skills he needs to succeed as an artist. The fact that this project replicates--rather than invents--something is part of its instructiveness. It's immediately clear how well the material and construction meets the goal, because the behavior of the model can be compared readily to a well-known original. Art schools can't teach creativity. This is what they teach.